Mobbing is not an individual problem. In fact, this is a serious problem for the organization, which jeopardizes its survival.
Avramchuk L.P., Bogdanova L.S.
Institute of Aviation Technology and Management, Ulyanovsk State Technical University,
g. Ulyanovsk
The term mobbing comes from the English noun “mob”, which means “crowd”. In turn, the English noun “mob” comes from the Latin expression “mobile vulgus”, which can be translated as “rebellious crowd”. As a scientific concept, the term “mobbing” was first used by K. Lorenz in 1958 to refer to the aggressive behavior of some animals towards others. The term “mobbing” became widely known abroad in the 60s of the 20th century after the publication of the Swedish physician Heinemann, who compared the cruel behavior of children towards other children with the aggressive behavior of animals and called it mobbing. Twenty years later, Swedish psychologist Leymann first used the term “mobbing” in its modern sense to refer to targeted psychoterror in the workplace.
Mobbing are negative communicative actions of one person or group of people (mobbing subject), which are usually directed against an individual (mobbing object), which occur very often or over a certain period of time and determine the relationship between the subject and the object of mobbing [2, P. 46]. Mobbing is regular and targeted harm to a person (both mental and physical) at work [3, P. 52].
Mobbing is most often directed against members of racial, ethnic, religious, sexual minorities, people with physical or psychological defects and disabilities, and those who are different from everyone who cannot stand up for themselves. In addition, moral harassment may occur on the basis of gender relations [7, P. 40]. Here we can talk about such a phenomenon as harassment. Harassment — this is an unwelcome sign of attention, more precisely, sexual harassment [9, P. 41]. The consequences of mobbing for human health and life are appalling. Mobbing can lead to nervous diseases, heart attacks, and even suicide.
There are many variations of mobbing. Firstly, mobbing can be horizontal (colleague against colleague) and vertical (manager against subordinate or subordinate against manager).
Horizontal mobbing occurs most often. There are a lot of reasons for this. Some attacks are caused by personal enmity, envy of a younger and more successful colleague; sometimes their own discontent is taken out on the socially weak and “different”. Sometimes mobbing is used to accustom group members to group norms, and sometimes just as a remedy for boredom. The reason for mobbing between colleagues can and, as a rule, is competition for production tasks, higher social status or higher wages.
The second most frequent mobbing is “supervisor versus subordinate”. This type of mobbing is called “bossing”. The manager has ample opportunities for mobbing. The main forms of bossing are making low or excessive demands on subordinates, constant control, limiting powers, isolating them, constantly changing production tasks, assigning meaningless, unpleasant and impossible tasks, manipulating information, separating work groups, pitting employees against each other through targeted personal comments, sowing mistrust, and inciting competition. Managers can justify their bullying by presenting it as logical measures and supposedly objective requirements, which prevents subordinates from effectively resisting.
The third most common form of mobbing is the bullying of supervisors by subordinates — “staffing”. This form is quite rare, since power is more on the side of the manager than on the subordinate. Staffing can occur when an employer appoints a manager who the staff does not like, when employees consider the manager to be unfair, incompetent, offensive, or authoritarian. Most often, managers are the winners in this fight [2, P. 46].
When considering this phenomenon, it is useful to keep in mind that mobbing can occur both in open and latent forms.
In case latent mobbing The action takes place in accordance with the well-known proverb: “Give a man a rope and he will hang himself.” Informal communication with colleagues or boss is drastically reduced to a minimum. Colleagues start avoiding you, withholding the necessary information or providing you too late, when you are no longer able to do anything to fix the situation. They make it clear that you are an empty place. Vertical latent mobbing can result in your immediate supervisor belittling the results of your work, ignoring your initiative, arranging important meetings in your absence, entrusting you with the most hopeless and inconspicuous job. In short, blocking your career opportunities is invisible to anyone but you. The goal of the pursuer, which underlies this modification of mobbing, is to make your stay at work unbearable, to force you to leave the organization [3, P. 52].
When open mobbing the range of tricks used by the initiators of mobbing is very rich and sophisticated. Everything is used: from lying and slandering the victim to the destruction of important documents. This is where “bullying” may occur. “Bullying” is understood as aggressive behavior, expressed in malicious harassment, cruelty, attempts to insult and humiliate an employee, and undermine his reputation. Bullying can take the following behavioral forms: shouting and insulting, rejecting someone else's point of view and imposing your own on others, lack of delegation and concentration of authority solely in your own hands, constant criticism and pointing out misconduct or incompetence [6, P. 118].
If you value your job or position and are not going to capitulate at the first symptoms of mobbing, then even in the most hopeless situation — where the law is powerless — psychological defense methods come to the rescue.
Quite often, a potentially conflicting person acts as an offender. In this case, the “risk group” automatically includes people who are insufficiently confident, vulnerable, anxious, and unable to adequately fight back against attacks from their aggressive colleague. Hence rule number 1: immediately abandon the role of victim that is being imposed on you. A person who is confident in himself and his abilities, deliberately weeding out the negative experiences that they are trying to impose on her from the outside through an invisible filter, can fight back against the most sophisticated mobber. If a vicious circle does form, it can be broken by applying the techniques of “psychological aikido”: not responding with aggression to aggression, always maintaining your presence of mind, and neutralizing the effects of distress on the body. To do this, you can use simple and affordable methods, from a contrast shower to visualization techniques. In order to minimize the influence that the “aggressor” is trying to have on you, you should try to present it in a funny way [4, P. 50].
A team may have an individual for whom mobbing is a unique way of asserting themselves. First, she provokes you, makes you angry, and then publicly labels you “an intolerable person” or “crazy”. Therefore, rule number 2 says, maintain peace of mind. One of the most effective behavioral strategies in this situation is based on the use of “psychological sambo” techniques: first, take a break before answering the “aggressor”; secondly, choosing the right tone (calm, thoughtful or even fun); thirdly, using clear speech formulas. The question about the goals asked by the addressee in response to the taunts that have been voiced becomes discrediting the manipulator's actions.
The situation is more complicated if you are faced with mobbing, which takes place in a latent form. In this situation, you must act in accordance with rule No. 3: do not be silent. First, try calling the offender to an honest, frank conversation. If his goal is to remove you from the organization by any means, if he does not accept any compromises, then there is only one really effective way for you — the path of confrontation. Although most of us choose an adjustment or care strategy. In order to withstand a confrontation with a person superior to you in status, it is not necessary to resort to the dirty tricks that he uses against you. It is enough to raise your professional level to such a level as to prove with your success to everyone around you that your manager is biased towards you [4, P. 52].
Business consultants, unlike psychologists, look for the reasons for mobbing in the organizational structure and organizational climate:
Very often, mobbing is used in situations where you just need to reduce the number of staff and thus reduce office maintenance costs [9, P. 41].
Measures aimed at preventing mobbing should be comprehensive and may include the following range of actions:
Some European countries, such as Germany, France and Sweden, have passed laws on moral harassment in the workplace to protect victims of mobbing. Other countries are developing similar bills [9, P. 40]. In Russia, the term “mobbing” is not known to the legislator, because otherwise it would have to be adequately reflected in the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and in other federal laws that regulate social and labor relations to one degree or another. Currently, this social phenomenon has been given appropriate attention by the European Social Charter (revised). The Russian Federation has signed the European Social Charter and is currently working to ratify this European legal act in the field of social and labour relations. Therefore, specialists in the field of law and the public need to take into account everything advanced and relevant in the field of protecting human and civil rights.
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